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A momentous day for a happier UK

01 Dec 2011 | Mark Williamson

Today should, in my humble view, go down as a momentous day in
UK history. The Office for National Statistics has published the
very first official results from its new programme to
measure our national wellbeing. The announcement has been rather
low-key and the data is only based on a very small sample (4,200
adults) and a limited period since April this year. Yet this is a
groundbreaking development and will hopefully provide the basis for
a profound shift in government policy-making. If used in the right
way, these new wellbeing measures - and crucially the future policy
decisions which take them into account - could ultimately help to
transform millions of people's lives for the better.

For far too long our main focus in measuring the progress of
nations has been economic growth, in the form of increasing gross
domestic product (GDP). Although very useful as a measure of
economic output, GDP fails to take into account many of the things
that matter most to us. Moreover, our obsession with growing GDP
has increasingly put people's lives in the service of the economy,
rather than the other way around. Economic growth is really just
the means to an end, not the end in itself; it matters only insofar
as it contributes to social progress and wellbeing. Yet the tragedy
is that, despite decades of growth and material progress, surveys
consistently show that average levels of life satisfaction in the
UK are no higher now than they were sixty years ago.

The problems with GDP as a measure of social progress were
perhaps highlighted most eloquently in a speech by Robert Kennedy when he famously said
that GDP "measures everything except that which makes life
worthwhile". That was in 1968, so this isn't exactly a new
revelation. But it's only in very recent years that wellbeing
research, across fields as diverse as psychology, sociology,
neuroscience and economics, has progressed to the point where it
has become viable to start measuring our subjective wellbeing with
a degree of confidence and validity.

The most fundamental shift here is that we are now officially
measuring and valuing people's subjective feelings about how their
lives are going. This is incredibly important. Yet many people are
dismissive of subjective measures as, by their very nature, they
are seen to lack objectivity and rigour. It's therefore worth
remembering that we already rely on subjective measures in other
areas of public life. An example is the Consumer Confidence index
which is used to gauge public optimism about the state of the
economy. To dismiss something as unimportant because it's
subjective is actually absurd. Take pain for example. Like
happiness, pain is subjective and differs significantly between
people. Nevertheless it matters deeply to us and we spend millions
of pounds each year on medicines to alleviate it.

Using subjective measures does of course raise lots of important
questions: for example: Is it possible to measure people's personal
views on their wellbeing in a consistent and accurate way?
Actually, one of the main reasons that scientists and statisticians
are now placing more confidence in such measurements is that they
have been shown to correlate with things that can be measured
objectively. For example, our self reported feelings of positive
and negative emotion correlate closely with electrical activity
measured in different areas of our brains. They also correlate with
independent reports from people who know us and with concrete
actions that we take in our lives - like ending a marriage or
changing jobs.

It is only by asking people how they feel that we start to
uncover and understand their unique experience of life. It's not
possible for me to say whether or not you're happy by looking at
facts about your housing, education, income or health (although of
course these things do generally correlate with happiness); only
you can tell me how you're really feeling. It's essential we
remember that anxiety and depression affect one in four of us, including very large
numbers of people who are apparently successful in outwardly
visible terms, but inside are suffering serious emotional and
psychological trauma.

This is undoubtedly a controversial time for government to be
introducing new wellbeing measures. With huge economic challenges,
increasing unemployment, and public anger being expressed in
protests and strikes, many people understandably see politicians
talking about wellbeing as a cynical attempt to distract the masses
from big threats to their living standards. And many would also
argue that the biggest cuts to public services in a generation are
undermining things which are essential for our wellbeing - like
children's centres and mental health services, to give just two of
examples. However, to give David Cameron some credit, he called for
this shift in focus as far back as 2006 - long before he became
prime minister - when he said "It's time we admitted there's more
to life than money and focused not just on GDP but on GWB: general
wellbeing".

Government officials wanting to measure our wellbeing isn't some
awful Orwellian nightmare, where we're forced to be happy with our
lot; in fact it's quite the opposite. By asking people about their
wellbeing, this is about government hearing how people are really
feeling and learning which things we value most in our lives and
our communities. Over time it should lead to a greater recognition
that activities which appear to be good for growing the economy
aren't necessarily good for people's long-term wellbeing. This
isn't about government making people happy; it's about them giving
people a voice and listening to them.

So what are the key findings from today's wellbeing publication?
Well at the headline level there are certainly some positives.
Despite our significant economic difficulties and the seemingly
constant doom and gloom in our newspapers, a very significant
proportion of people (76%) rated their life satisfaction as 7 or
more out of 10 (mean score 7.4/10), with similarly positive scores
for the extent to which people reported feeling happy and feeling
that what they do in their life is worthwhile. Clearly things are
not all bad and this is a timely reminder that our wellbeing is not
as closely tied to our financial circumstances as we're often led
to believe. But nevertheless, we could be doing a lot better. For
example, countries like Denmark, Norway and Canada consistently
score above 8 out of 10 for average life satisfaction.

More worryingly, 8% of people rated their overall life
satisfaction as less than 5 out of 10. This is a very low life
satisfaction score; by way of comparison it's similar to average
scores in countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia. 8% of people may
not sound like much, but if this is truly the case nationally that
equates to around 5 million unhappy people. Most worryingly of all,
a very significant proportion of the population (27%) recorded high
scores for levels of anxiety (i.e. more than 5 on a scale of 0 to
10). Part of this may of course be due to the current climate of
economic uncertainty and unemployment. But many would also argue
that our frenetic consumer culture has been a major contributor, by
encouraging constant striving for wealth and status at all costs.
Whatever the underlying drivers, these findings provide a stark
reminder that there is still far too much unnecessary suffering and
unhappiness in our society and we urgently need to act on this.

Understanding the findings, and what drives them, should be a
top priority for policy makers over the coming months and years.
The ability to interpret the wellbeing data will also be
significantly enhanced next year when the ONS has results from the
full 200,000 or so households that are now being surveyed.
Crucially, this larger set of wellbeing data is being captured
alongside a wide range of other household information. This
means it should be possible to correlate measures of life
satisfaction with many other important indicators, such as income,
housing, crime levels or health. Over time this will give us a much
clearer picture of which factors relate most closely to high or low
levels of wellbeing. Today's publication did a bit of this; for
example it shows that people who are married are typically happier
than those who are not and that the highest levels of life
satisfaction were in the 65 to 74 age group (7.9/10 on
average).

But measurement and analysis is of course not enough. It's just
the beginning. The new wellbeing data must be used to drive
concrete action in terms of policy development. Encouragingly the
head of the civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell, is now asking
departments across Whitehall to consider the impact of their
policies on wellbeing. And the Treasury guidance used to assess the
impact of policy changes is being updated - so new initiatives will
now have to consider the potential impact on wellbeing, alongside
existing considerations like the impact on growth and employment.
This provides an opportunity to rethink some extremely important
issues. For example, our economy was landed in its present mess, at
least in part, because it was believed that deregulation of banks
would produce higher long-term growth. That was an argument based
on the wrong priorities and has led to extremely damaging
consequences for our wellbeing. We must learn to use the new
well-being data to avoid repeating these kinds of mistakes.

So today is a momentous day for a happier UK, not because of the
findings that have just been published, but because this is the
start of a vitally important journey towards prioritising the
things that really matter most. Long may it continue.